A third political party is a little like having a third hand. It
is, sometimes, useful to have, and it can be very effective for certain
tasks—say, if you’re juggling three balls and have a sudden need to pick
your nose. But, in the long run, you can’t really live with it.
Third parties don’t have a “successful” history in the U.S. if success is
measured by “big names” being elected to the White House or the congress.
Except for the GOP (remember Lincoln?), which came to life in 1854, tried for
the President’s home with John C. Fremont, failed, but six years later had its
man in the White House, the real success of third-party efforts has been two
intertwined effects: having its ideas stolen by the other two parties, which
used and implemented them, and thereby pushing the standard, status quo
political dialogue off dead center. We’ve had socialists, free-soilers,
libertarians, greens, progressives, and various flavors of every possible
permutation of belief in America.

Today, we have something called the Tea Party, which is not a party in
any traditional sense, but a raggedy grouping of people intent on having their
say—even when they really don’t seem to know what they are talking about
Some of them really don’t knowwhat they’re
talking about, some do know what they’re saying but either don’t say
it clearly or unambiguously, or what they actually say is puerile, irrelevant,
and/or obviously reflect delusions of knowledge. Perhaps some of these
people don’t see it as an insult to the voting public that they feel they
don’t have to KNOW anything, that they can recite whatever “facts” or
statistics which fits with their worldview, and no one will really check.
Or care. And many of the members of this group have gray in their hair and
should know better, but still they go on.

Two immediate examples: In January, Rep. Paul Broun called Obama a
socialist, saying it wasn’t name-calling, “just pointing out a fact.
The President, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama believe the federal government
should do everything for everybody. They believe in a socialistic
Washington-controlled government that tells everybody what kind of health care
we can have, what kind of light bulbs we can have.” This is one of those
people with gray in his hair who would be the first one to howl for the feds to
come to his state to help with wildfires, or scream bloody murder when his
grandkids get sick from tainted milk because the feds don’t have enough food
inspectors. The second example comes from Orange County, California.
A sweet-looking grandmotherly woman, Marilyn Davenport, a Tea Party activist and
member of the central committee of the Republican Party of Orange County, sent
out an email showing a doctored photo of three monkeys, the smallest of which
has the President’s face, with the caption “Now you know why no birth
certificate.” She said it was “a joke” and “found it amusing
regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding the origin of
his birth.” She went on to explain that the President’s race (she
called him “half-black”) never entered her mind, and she whined that she got
plenty of emails about Bush 43 she didn’t like, but “there was no ‘cry’
in the media about them.” She didn’t apologize, only saying that what
she did was “inappropriate,” though it was unclear what, exactly, was
inappropriate—whether it was the picture, the emailing, or the getting caught.
Here is a woman who doesn’t seem to have much shame, let alone sense.
She claimed she was a Christian lady who tries to lead a Christ-like life.
WWJS (What Would Jesus Say)?

Socially, the Tea Party is still in the 18th century (if you
are Black, a woman, a Native-American, a LGBT person, someone who doesn’t own
property, or a child living in coal-mine country, then you might be a little
less willing to see them take over the country). Politically and
economically, they are helping to change the dialogue in this country, and there
is no doubt that at least some of their ideas about spending and budget
decisions will be absorbed by the electorate and both Democrats and mainstream
Republicans—if they can keep their Pre-Enlightenment ideas to themselves.
It will be up to those with sense, world and life experience, and political
savvy to separate the wheat from the chaff, and take what is good and trash the
rest—sending the Tea Party into the phantom zone of “where are they now?”
blogs.

But what if you grow to like that third hand? What if you get used
to having those extra ten fingers and doing things you couldn’t before?
What then? Maybe you’ll marry some fine person who admires your
increased dexterity and maybe genetics will eventually begin producing
three-handed kids across the country, and maybe, in some distant future, the
two-handed among us will become rare and ostracized. This has never
happened with a third party in this country, except for the Republican Party,
which stuck around by incorporating ideas from lots of sources, by producing a
Lincoln, and by navigating (after many miscues and an enormous amount of blood)
a civil war. Our political genetics are pretty restrictive, but that meme,
the odd gene, that stray idea, gets absorbed into the body politic and we move
on. Will this happen with the Tea Party? As Ho Chi Minh is reported
to have responded when asked what he thought about the French revolution:
“Too soon to tell,” but so far, no Lincoln has emerged from the howling
ranks of the Tea Party faithful.

The House Speaker, John Boehner, has his hands full—and he only has two
of them—with many of his fractious colleagues, whose life and world
experiences have the depth of a dime, and who plan on making enormous budget
cuts in order, they insist, to make the U.S. as solvent as a drug cartel.
No matter what happens, the energy, some of the ideas, and policy positions of
the Tea Party will survive in some form in our politics. The traditional
GOP pols will have to give a bit to stay in power and the Tea folk will have to
back off a bit to sound more reasonable to voters in their next election cycle.
The third hand will disappear if the Tea Party can’t pass its genetic material
on to the next generation of jugglers and nose-pickers. So let that third
hand do whatever it likes. If the body tires of trying to find an extra
pocket to put it in, it will wither and disappear. Only the memory will
remain.